My life really begins with my battle with cancer. I was 18. Before then I was a fairly normal guy–at least as normal went at the time. I had friends, interests. I loved to read. I’d been writing since I could remember, creating my own books out of construction paper. I’d written over 100 of them by the time I was 7. I had never planned to make writing my career. It was always supposed to be extra. I grew up loving sci-fi, fantasy and found Dungeons & Dragons when I was 14 with my best friend, Jon. I remember several lifetimes, not just my own. I also loved to fish, taught by my grandfather. Fishing is how I got Lyme Disease at 16.
It took under an hour for a tumor the size of a golf ball to grow under my ear. I had just showered and shaved, so I know the area I was flat. I sat down to watch a late episode of Deep Space Nine, my favorite–The Die is Cast–when I checked the area to make sure I’d done a clean shave, and there it was: a sizable lump. I had just spent the last year fighting an entrenched Lyme Disease infection, and I’d finally gotten myself on tract. I looked forward to returning to my life. The next morning, I called my doctor, and they quickly saw me. Two days later, I had surgery. After a few misses, the Armed Forces Institute identify the tumor as two types of lymphoma: Large Cell and Hodgkins Disease. I was the tenth person in the world to have two lymphomas at once, something they called Hodgkins Lymphoma.
Yeah! I’m special!
A few weeks later, after having trouble identifying it, I started chemotherapy: an intense treatment of CHOP. Chemo was one of the worst experiences of my life. I spent the day in a chemo chair. The stale chemical smell still makes me nauseous when I think about it. Then, especially because of the heavy amount, I spent the next week throwing up every hour. A week after that, my white count died. A week later, I began the process all over again.
I thought that was horrible enough, and I figured the worst was over when I started radiation treatment that September. All I had to do was get zapped in four places once a day for a few weeks. X-rays were easy, right? The effects of chemo hit fast. Radiation burned slow, cumulatively and so much worse. My throat nearly sealed up. The pain felt like a vice gripped my throat. I had sun burn on my face, chest and back. Towards the end of it, I weighed 80 pounds. I could no longer eat. I was burned to my bone, fading away. And it nearly killed me.
In October, I went into the hospital for a month. I lingered on the edge of death. It’s an odd feeling: fading away. I just felt less, made of air, dissipating. Then, somehow, I survived through it. I was declared in remission. I’d beaten extreme odds.
LIFE AFTER CANCER
No one prepared me for what came after. No one ever does. Your support system focuses on your physical survival. I had endured a deeply traumatic experience, made all the worse by my consent, and I had danced on deaths’ door. It changes you. The treatment wrecks you, rewires your brain and eats your nervous system. But when it was all done, I was expected to just forget about it all. I had survived. I should have been grateful. And no one wanted to think about it anymore. For many years I tried to ignore it. I wasn’t allowed to admit that I’d been damaged by it physically and emotionally. I was trained to believe that admitting any kind of disability was a surrender, that I could somehow will it better. It took me two decades to understand that accepting and adapting was not failure.
Cancer patients spend their lives making everyone around them feel better.
It did affect me. And I’m still struggling with the trauma.
PENNSBURY MANOR & HISTORY
I found refuge volunteering and eventually working in the gift shop at Pennsbury Manor. Pennsbury is the 16th century home of the founder of the state of Pennsylvania, William Penn. It’s colonial manor farm with manor house, bake and brew, kitchen garden and farm on the Delaware River located on the south-east coast of Pennsylvania. There I studied history, gave tours, worked in the kitchen gardens where I learned about herbs and eventually became their resident medical historian, doing classes as a colonial doctor. The kids loved the gore! Pennsbury is where I went to heal, there among the poplar trees, the herb gardens, the oak at the river, and it’s where I found my writing again.
WRITING
I grew up writing Ray Bradbury, along with all the classics you read when you are young like The Chronicles of Narnia. In my later teens, I toured American authors from the 20th century: Hemingway, Salinger, Capote. I connected the most with Truman Capote, though Salinger’s Nine Stories delighted and upset me. I started writing literary fiction. I studied some writing books and learned how to submit stories. I created pristine submission packages, professional. This was at the end of the era of submissions by post. Most publishers warned authors that an email submission was an instant rejection. Now it’s the opposite, but back then email was considered disrespectful. So every Friday I spent nearly ten dollars in postage sending off large white envelopes to magazines like Gargoyle and American Short Story. None of them accepted me! I mailed off tons of submissions and got back many SASEs. (SELF ADDRESSED STAMPED ENVELOPES) for all of you new authors who didn’t earn your wings with snail mail.
I finally got published in a small magazine called My Legacy, put out by a nice lady. It wasn’t a high-profile credit, but for a young person starting out it was a major achievement. I didn’t know then how far I’d go.
ALLISON
I used to go up to the local Barnes & Nobles in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania to write most every day. I was driven by survival. Writing was the only way I could create any kind of future for myself, and I didn’t want to keep bouncing about into the care of others. I wanted to be independent, free to make my own choices, but I was disabled, very ill, not allowed to drive for medical reasons and never had a chance to create a foundation for myself. So, I wrote and prayed for a miracle. It was at the bookstore I met an unconventional young woman who started as a barista while she worked at a law firm and saved money to take accounting as a grad program. Allison and I soon became fast friends. As she likes to say, I could keep up with her. We fell in love, and a year after dating, we were married in Scotland. We have been together ever since as she finished grad school in UNC and take a job in public accounting at RKL in Lancaster, where we currently reside. Allison and her family saved my life and gave me the chance to build something for myself. I would have nothing without her, and she has made me quite happy.
While Allison attended UNC, I wrote . . . and wrote and wrote. I did a podcast for a few years: What Are You Afraid Of? Horror & Paranormal Show but decided to end it to pursue other topics and focus on my writing. After I wrote my three novels, The Street Martyr, Mercy and Destroying the Tangible Illusion of Reality, or Searching for Andy Kaufman, I slowed down. I still struggled with nihilism and survivor’s guilt, and I sabotaged my success. I had more scares with cancer. Shortly before we were married in 2015, I learned that I had to get my thyroid cut out because it was going malignant–a late side effect from radiation therapy of my neck. I’ve also suffered several life-threatening infections, one last year in 2021 that put me in the hospital for a week. I have a broken immune system, so I am suspectable to Covid.
Over those years, I continued writing short fiction. I didn’t just want to keep getting published. I wanted to challenge myself, expand my crafting ability and vision. I picked stories that pushed my boundaries, and over the winter, I studied the art of non-fiction writing. I’d dabbled before with essays and features, but I started taking the crafting seriously. My first feature, Healing from Cancer at the Gardens of Pennsbury Manor, was accepted for publication by Still Points Quarterly to be featured in the Gardening issue this summer 2022. It’s the first of many new essays I plan to write including op-ed pieces for the Pennsylvania election. I have some experience writing and publishing those a few years for a congressional primary in Pennsylvania.
Since my birthday, I came to terms with cancer and my survivor’s guilt, and I’m finally ready to move forward with my career without sabotaging myself. I struggled, but I’m finally at a healthy place. And I’ve not been idle. I’ve continued to sell quality fiction and answer solicitations. I’ve kept up a constant stream of publications in various anthologies and magazines with well-known authors and many future projects on the way.